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I tend to lean "New Sincerity" myself. I see irony as a self congratulatory dead end in-joke at best and often it just normalizes things that shouldn't be normalized, sometimes inviting non-ironic terrible people to do the once ironic terrible thing. See: 4chan.
With the way the video explained metamodernism, metamodernism comes off as an insincere art movement that isn't even sincere about being insincere. For all of the many, many, many problems that comes with ironic detachment, at least postmodernism is honest about being insincere. It's a question of sincerely insincere vs insincerely insincere.
To me, Contrapoints exemplifies insincere insincerity and it's quite telling the video pulled a Contra to demonstrate how metamodernism breaks the fourth wall. Can we tell what Contra truly believes without using some tl;dr Twitter thread Natalie tweeted as paratext? Contra's characters either mean what they say or mean the exact opposite of what they say depending on whether Natalie the person gets backlash on social media. While a postmodernist work can also suffers from this, unlike Contrapoints, it isn't particularly relevant whether you can divine some truth from the work because ironic detachment is completely assumed to be a given. Meanwhile, the selling point of Contrapoints like most Youtubers is that we can establish a parasocial bond with her, meaning we can't treat her work with ironic detachment but must actually have at least something in order to emotionally latch on to.
Based on how he explains the two art movements, postmodernism would be someone who lies all the time while metamodernism would be someone who lies half the time. A pathological liar isn't that hard to deal with. You just go into every conversation assuming they're completely full of shit and adjust your behavior accordingly. A serial bullshitter who tells entertaining stories is someone you could befriend as long as you treat them as someone who tells entertaining stories. But a person who lies half the time is far trickier to deal with because you're constantly second-guessing yourself whether they're actually honest or completely full of shit. It's for this reason why most predators and abusers don't actually lie all the time, but some of the time.
Far from being liberatory, metamodernism represents a further descent as films get further detached from any reflection of the human condition, where even insincerity is insincere.
I don't identify with "metamodernism" because even the label feels clunky and, as you put it, insincere. You identified the problems with "metamodernism" well; now that I think about it it has the worst parts of ironic detachment as a defense mechanism but also has a crocodile-teared plea to be taken seriously when it suits it and seems safe.
I tend to lean "New Sincerity" myself. I see irony as a self congratulatory dead end in-joke at best and often it just normalizes things that shouldn't be normalized, sometimes inviting non-ironic terrible people to do the once ironic terrible thing. See: 4chan.
With the way the video explained metamodernism, metamodernism comes off as an insincere art movement that isn't even sincere about being insincere. For all of the many, many, many problems that comes with ironic detachment, at least postmodernism is honest about being insincere. It's a question of sincerely insincere vs insincerely insincere.
To me, Contrapoints exemplifies insincere insincerity and it's quite telling the video pulled a Contra to demonstrate how metamodernism breaks the fourth wall. Can we tell what Contra truly believes without using some tl;dr Twitter thread Natalie tweeted as paratext? Contra's characters either mean what they say or mean the exact opposite of what they say depending on whether Natalie the person gets backlash on social media. While a postmodernist work can also suffers from this, unlike Contrapoints, it isn't particularly relevant whether you can divine some truth from the work because ironic detachment is completely assumed to be a given. Meanwhile, the selling point of Contrapoints like most Youtubers is that we can establish a parasocial bond with her, meaning we can't treat her work with ironic detachment but must actually have at least something in order to emotionally latch on to.
Based on how he explains the two art movements, postmodernism would be someone who lies all the time while metamodernism would be someone who lies half the time. A pathological liar isn't that hard to deal with. You just go into every conversation assuming they're completely full of shit and adjust your behavior accordingly. A serial bullshitter who tells entertaining stories is someone you could befriend as long as you treat them as someone who tells entertaining stories. But a person who lies half the time is far trickier to deal with because you're constantly second-guessing yourself whether they're actually honest or completely full of shit. It's for this reason why most predators and abusers don't actually lie all the time, but some of the time.
Far from being liberatory, metamodernism represents a further descent as films get further detached from any reflection of the human condition, where even insincerity is insincere.
I don't identify with "metamodernism" because even the label feels clunky and, as you put it, insincere. You identified the problems with "metamodernism" well; now that I think about it it has the worst parts of ironic detachment as a defense mechanism but also has a crocodile-teared plea to be taken seriously when it suits it and seems safe.